Sometimes at Night

By Ben Sanders

When a former NYPD colleague is shot dead in front of him, private investigator Marshall Grade discovers there’s far more to the killing than meets the eye.

Ray Vialoux is in trouble. Big trouble. And he needs Marshall Grade’s help.

Reluctantly, Grade agrees to meet. Over dinner in a Brooklyn restaurant, he learns that his former NYPD colleague owes money – a lot of money – to the wrong people. But the conversation is cut short by gunfire, and suddenly Ray is lying dead on the restaurant floor.

As Marshall investigates the circumstances leading up to the murder, tracking down the drug dealers, bag men, bent cops and mob players within Ray’s orbit, it becomes clear there’s far more to the killing than a gambling debt. Just who is responsible for Vialoux’s death . . . and why? What secrets are his family hiding? And can Marshall find the answers before his own history marks him as the prime suspect?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severn House
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781448305568

Ben Sanders

Ben Sanders has been a keen writer since his early teens and his debut novel, THE FALLEN, was published to high acclaim in 2010. His second novel, BY ANY MEANS, published in 2011 also received excellent reviews and spent a number of weeks in New Zealand's top 10. ONLY THE DEAD is his third novel.

Book preview

ONE

Marshall said, ‘So what’s the problem, Ray? Tell me a story.’

Ray Vialoux drained his wine and picked up the bottle with his other hand before he’d even set the glass down. The place had only been open for two months, and Marshall thought that Vialoux might be setting an early precedent in terms of consumption. He watched Vialoux fill his glass to the rim and then lean forward to sup the first mouthful, like taking the foam off a pint of beer. Last time they’d seen each other was 2010, but Vialoux seemed to be aging in overdrive: bloodshot and pale, neck and jowls too stringy for a man not yet fifty. He looked like he’d eaten nothing for a week and then driven here at a hundred miles an hour with no windshield.

Marshall said, ‘Going off body language, I have to assume it’s pretty bad.’

Vialoux slid his glass aside, looked at his arms folded on the table. Shirtsleeves pushed back and a shabby bloom of cuff at his elbows. He scanned the room slowly, hunched and looking out from under his brow, like the burden of things going wrong was too much for normal posture.

He said, ‘I didn’t know who else to talk to, so you’re it.’

He gave Marshall half a smile, like his situation – whatever it was – still had a funny side. They were in an Italian restaurant down in Sunset Park. The dining room was the converted bottom floor of a two-story clapboard house on a corner site, fronting Fourth Avenue. Marshall hoped the place would survive. He and Vialoux were the only customers, and Marshall’s presence didn’t count for much as far as the check was concerned. He was still on his first beer, some kind of micro-brew label he’d never heard of, but no doubt a sensible offering in gentrified Brooklyn, where the local denizens would take a photo of the can and then put it on Twitter. They had a table near the back of the room, Marshall in the forward-facing chair so he could see the door, a row of windows on his right showing the cross street: quiet and dark, the blacktop shiny from late-evening rain. Every now and then a car went by with a hiss of groundwater.

Vialoux looked at his arms some more, seeming embarrassed. ‘Anyway. Thanks. I know it’s been a while, so I appreciate it.’

‘I haven’t done anything yet.’

‘Yeah, well. You showed up. That’s a start. Where you been, anyway? You were UC, right?’

NYPD, undercover.

The worst years of his life.

Marshall nodded.

Vialoux said, ‘I heard … man, I heard all kinds of stories.’

Marshall didn’t answer.

‘I mean … I heard your op went pretty bad. Everyone heard about your shootout, up by the park. And then you just seemed to disappear and … yeah. People said maybe witness protection, maybe you’d left the country or something.’

‘I was in New Mexico a few years, but I’ve been back up here since 2016.’

‘And no one’s murdered you.’ Vialoux managing a smile.

‘Yeah. Knock on wood. I do a fair bit of looking over my shoulder.’

Marshall slid his can aside, like it might open up the conversation, get them to the heart of the matter. He’d had to wait ten minutes for the dew line to draw down below the rim, giving him space to get a thumb on there without disrupting the moisture pattern. He didn’t know why he had to do it that way but he did. Situations came at him with information, parameters for action. He didn’t know why. Some part of his head gave him rules and he followed them.

He said, ‘All right. Lay it out for me.’

Vialoux’s shirt was open two buttons. He jutted his chin and tugged some more slack out of his tie. Marshall saw his Adam’s apple dip and come back.

Vialoux said, ‘I got in sorta deep with guys I shouldn’t have.’

‘All right.’

He waited, but Vialoux was taking his time, rolling his wineglass stem between his thumb and forefinger, giving that small motion a lot of focus. Back in 2010, he’d been a narc detective at Brooklyn South, and always seemed sure of himself, the way people do when they’re on a path that means something to them. Right now, sitting hunched and thirty pounds lighter, missing that magic weight of a gold shield and a gun, he looked as if everything central to his happiness was being slowly crossed off a list.

Marshall said, ‘I’m not going to see it any different, whether you say it fast or say it slow.’

Vialoux looked up. ‘You probably figured this isn’t something I can take to the front desk of the precinct.’

‘There are other people you can call. Even if you’re not completely spotless on this. But I don’t even know what we’re talking about yet. There’s no point saying it in riddles. Just lay it out plain for me.’

Vialoux didn’t seem to hear him. He said, ‘I just want to let you know before we get into it. So you know what kind of circus you’re showing up for.’

Some guys were like this with bad news, edged up on it slow like a kid at a diving board. Marshall leaned to his left and looked past Vialoux’s shoulder to the maître d’ station and the front door. A clean break would be as easy as getting up and walking out. But being asked for help is a special kind of entrapment. To say no would be to forfeit moral fiber. Then again, to say yes would be to forfeit even more, potentially. There’d be a line somewhere. A point of optimal involvement.

Marshall said, ‘What’s happened?’

Vialoux’s foot was pumping under the table. He said, ‘Guys down Brighton Beach running a sports book I been into. Sixty-k deep. Sixty-seven, actually. I owe sixty-seven.’

He glanced over his shoulder as the owner approached their table. He was a tall, beefy guy in his forties who had to walk sideways to get between the tables.

‘You guys good, Ray? You need anything? Another bottle?’

Vialoux stroked an eyebrow with a thumbnail, looked at the tablecloth. ‘We’re good, Paulie. Appreciate it. Maybe just the check, when you got a minute.’

The guy sidled off again, trailing hand raised, finger aimed at Vialoux. ‘Sure, you got it. Don’t you guys hurry, though – all the time in the world.’

Marshall drank some beer. He said, ‘Who’s running the book?’

Vialoux gave it a moment and then looked up again. ‘Mob guys. Italian mob guys. I thought … you know, I thought you might still have some phone numbers.’

‘I have some phone numbers. But I don’t have any seventy-thousand-dollar favors owing.’

Vialoux didn’t answer.

‘Give me some names. Who’s running this thing?’

Vialoux sighed, held his hands edgewise on the table, ten inches palm-to-palm. It seemed to Marshall he could see the whole dilemma framed there, overlapping wineglass stains like a Venn diagram of how life goes wrong.

He said, ‘I talked to a guy. You ever meet D’Anton Lewis?’

Marshall shook his head.

‘Finance guy, gets involved in various things … anyway, he got me in.’

He was nodding slowly to himself, looking out the window, as if trying to sum up how things could start OK and then veer off the rails. He said, ‘I had a … I’d sorted it out with them, I was paying it down. But, yeah …’ He shrugged. ‘They called it in. They called in the whole debt.’

Vialoux waited as Paulie put a pen and a wallet with the check on the table. The guy sidled off again, and Vialoux said quietly, ‘I’m maxed out. Man, you got no idea. I used to think … I never could understand how people could be poor, you know? It’s like: get a job, work your way out of it. But shit: I feel like … it’s like I’m walking a tightrope, and I got a bucket in this hand, and a bucket in this hand, and another fucking bucket on my head, and in a second I’m going to lose the whole lot.’

He closed his eyes, massaged his temples.

Marshall said, ‘Who’s running the book?’

‘Frank Cifaretti. He must be capo level, now. You know Frank?’

Marshall nodded. He recognized the name. His undercover work had been with the Asaro family. They thought he was a bent-cop-cum-bodyguard. He’d sat in on a couple meetings between them and Frank Cifaretti.

Marshall said, ‘I think we’ve met. You got a number for him?’

‘Yeah, I got a number, but it’s got to the point, he’s not even picking up the phone. I mean, he’s not even talking.’

He looked away, pumped his leg some more. Marshall’s beer can rattled faintly with the vibration. He set it on a napkin. It was empty now, and the stalagmite dew pattern would draw down whichever way it pleased. Marshall didn’t have a role in it. He was off the hook.

He watched Vialoux twist and reach in the pocket of the coat hanging on the back of his chair. He came out with a folded envelope, letter-size, flipped it on the table.

Marshall waited a moment before touching it. He knew he had to see the contents, but then everything he learned posed a risk of trapping him. Data has a gravity. There’d be a point where he’d learned too much, and couldn’t just walk away from the problem. Something would chime with that inner current, that inner guide who says, You should fix this.

Vialoux was leaning forward again, elbows on the table, the envelope’s fold easing slowly open.

Marshall picked it up.

Vialoux’s gaze was faraway and bright, his eyes starting to fill.

Marshall opened the flap and slid out the contents.

Two photographs. A shot of Vialoux’s wife, Hannah, side-on to the camera and opening a car door. And a headshot of his teenage daughter, Ella. Hair across her face, quarter-profile. Zoom-lens shots with foggy backgrounds.

Marshall said, ‘When did you get these?’

‘Yesterday.’ Vialoux cleared his throat, blinked a few times. When he spoke again his voice was steadier. ‘They were taken out front of the house. There’s a note, too.’

He didn’t see it at first, but then he moved apart the photos and found the strip of paper: MONEY BY TUESDAY. NO COPS.

Today was Thursday.

Five days to get him out of it.

Marshall slid everything back in the envelope and closed the flap and placed the envelope in the center of the table. Like that small point of order was step one in bringing order to the bigger picture.

Vialoux massaged the bridge of his nose, dragged his hand down his face. ‘I didn’t sleep last night. Kept hearing break-ins, you know? People showing up early to collect.’ He shook his head. ‘Jesus.’

Marshall said, ‘If he’s not answering the phone, how do you tell him the money’s ready?’

‘He used to just call, I’d meet him in his car somewhere. It’s almost like a hobby for him, you know? Go for a drive, pick up a few k. Plus it’s harder for the law to keep an eye on him. Does business somewhere different every time. He used to have this bagel place, Neptune Ave, but I only ever dealt with him in the car.’

‘Who else have you told?’

‘No one. Just you.’

‘All right.’

Marshall picked up the pen and tested it on a napkin, and then flipped the napkin over to the clean side. He could see it wasn’t quite square. He laid the pen neatly on the principal transverse axis of the napkin with an equal pen length projecting on each side and slid the napkin across the table to Vialoux.

Vialoux said, ‘My writing’s not that small.’

‘I don’t need it in scenes with dialogue. Just give me the names.’

Vialoux didn’t answer.

Marshall said, ‘I’m not saying I’ll do anything. But I can’t make up my mind one way or the other until I know the players. So.’

He nodded at the paper.

Vialoux’s eyes dropped to the table. He fortified with some wine and then raised the pen. Up front, Paulie was fussing with the register, trying to be unobtrusive, making a stealth job of killing time. Beyond him on Fourth Avenue the nighttime traffic was just floating lights running back and forth, puddles picking up the tint, an electric mural with each passing. Marshall leaned to pull his billfold from his pocket, and as he moved he had a broadened view of the window next to them, and on the sidewalk beyond the weak reflection of the tablecloth and its candle flame, he saw a man in black, face hidden by a ski mask, gloved hands bringing up a shotgun.

The barrel swung to target Vialoux as Marshall rose from his chair, and as he came upright he grabbed the table by its edge and flipped it toward the window. The tabletop was vertical as it struck the glass, the pane dropping out as a curtain of white pebbles, and then the shotgun boomed.

Quiet after that: splinters and blood exploding through the room in near-silence under the ringing in his ears. Marshall crouched and dived and caught Vialoux in a tackle chest-high, crashed him backward off his chair and onto the floor. The second shot blew out more glass and wood chips. Paulie was on his stomach beneath another table, hands crushed to his ears like a skull vise. Marshall risked a glance, saw the man with the gun cross the street to a car idling at the far curb, lights off, exhaust misting at its fender. The guy jumped in back and the car took off hard, cutting right onto Fourth through a red light.

No chance of catching them.

No chance of helping Vialoux, either: he lay on his back bleeding from the chest, eyes open in that distant stare the dead have, looking all the way to heaven.

TWO

Paulie had turned very white. Marshall kept him on his side under the table and called it in on the phone at the maître d’ station, told the operator what happened and gave a description of the car: silver Impala, maybe an oh-four model.

Six minutes later, a couple of uniformed guys from the seven-two precinct showed up in a radio car, full lights and noise. They came in with guns drawn, one guy staying up by the door while his partner came down for a look at Vialoux and decided, yeah, they definitely needed detectives.

Three more radio cars from the seven-two and an ambulance arrived. The paramedics took Paulie out on a stretcher and gave him oxygen, and twenty minutes after that, two detectives showed up.

One guy was Hispanic, early thirties, looked to be something of a bench-press enthusiast. His partner was a black guy nearing sixty, tall and lean enough the act of getting out from behind the wheel of the unmarked looked mechatronic: joint and limb motion like the sequenced unfolding of some prototype robot. They took a look at the broken glass and the table out on the sidewalk and then came into the restaurant.

Marshall was at a table by himself up front. The younger cop paused at the maître d’ station, like reflex obeyance of the WAIT TO BE SEATED sign, but the older guy came straight through without breaking step, everything about him dialed in on Vialoux.

Outside, one of the uniformed cops said, ‘Kinda looks like they overcooked his steak or something, tossed the table out the window.’

The younger detective smiled, and it got some chuckles going around cop-to-cop for a moment – ‘I asked for it fucking rare’ – but the older guy didn’t laugh or say anything. Marshall liked that. He was probably into his fourth decade of police work, maybe sacrificed plenty, but he hadn’t lost any deference. He knew walking up to a body and standing over it demands a certain attitude, certain manners.

He talked the younger cop through the scene examination – start at the body and work out, drink in the detail, don’t disrupt the blood spatter going for his pocket contents – and then he came back down the aisle to where Marshall was sitting.

‘You the guy that saw what happened?’

In the interest of completeness, Marshall was of a mind to tell him there were five guys who saw it: one was dead, one was outside in an ambulance, one pulled the trigger, one drove, and he was the fifth. But from the cop’s demeanor, Marshall gathered he was abreast of the semantics.

Marshall said, ‘Yeah. I was drinking with him.’

The detective sat down in the chair opposite, knees coming almost to table level. He wore a blue suit and a tie and small rimless spectacles. A thin beard disguising old acne scars, pockmarks, as if he’d been hit in the face with a load of number 10 birdshot. Marshall figured he must’ve been six foot six at least, maybe a hundred seventy pounds if you hosed him down in his suit and he kept his shoes on. He had a pen and a bound notebook with him.

‘I’m Detective Floyd Nevins, NYPD.’

He took a business card from his coat and slid it across the table, as if to prove the statement.

‘Are you happy to answer some questions?’

Marshall read the card and leaned to slip it in his pocket, the same reflex motion that had maybe saved his life thirty minutes ago, and said that he was. Nevins found a clean page, flipping past half a book’s worth of notes from other nights, other murders. He took down Marshall’s name and address, and then asked him what had happened. Marshall gave him the crux of it, said they were having a drink at the table down the back and a guy came up and shot Vialoux through the window. Got in the back of a waiting car and escaped uptown on Fourth.

The detective called Nevins looked down the aisle to where the damage was, as if making sure the story fit. He said, ‘Ray Vee-loo, huh? What’s the spelling on that?’

Marshall told him.

Nevins took it down, and seeing the name written seemed to spark something in his memory. He looked at the paper a long moment, fanned his pen absently in two fingers.

‘You get a look at the shooter?’

‘Lean guy, short, maybe five-seven with his boots on, one-fifty.’

‘You see his face?’

‘No. He wore a mask.’

‘No hair or skin exposed?’

Marshall shook his head. Outside, one of the uniformed cops was saying backup might be a while. The President was staying at his Fifth Avenue place. Half of NYPD was on guard duty in Manhattan.

Nevins said, ‘So nothing at all that stood out?’

‘Nothing physical. They knew what they were doing, though. That’s pretty distinctive with this sort of thing.’

Nevins didn’t answer, giving him room to unpack.

Marshall said, ‘A shot through the window’s hard, but probably the best option given the setup in here. We were way down at the far table, so if the shooter came in the front, we could’ve gone out the back. Percentages from their point of view were way down. I think they sat out there and thought about it and then made a final call. And I think that means they had a couple of different guns with them.’

Nevins just looked at him.

Marshall said, ‘No one shows up for a hit with just a pump-action Mossberg. The gun was as big as he was. I think they would’ve planned to do it close-in with a pistol, but then swapped to plan B. Which wasn’t necessarily a worse option. I mean, reflections on the glass, I didn’t even see him until he was six feet away. He fired twice – slugs, not buckshot, obviously. Then he walked across the street, got in the car, and they drove off. Car was a nothing-sedan, basically invisible. You add everything up, I think the bottom line says hired guys who’ve done this before. It was dispassionate and relaxed.’

Nevins said, ‘Anything else?’

Nothing in his tone, as if the conversation was essentially consistent with his last thirty-five years of witness interviews.

Marshall said, ‘The six-eight precinct’s only a few blocks away, so they needed to lose the car pretty fast. They went north, so I figure they went up to maybe Thirty-ninth Street, something like that, dropped the car off by the railyard. They could’ve had a swap-vehicle, or maybe just walked over to Ninth, took the subway. That’s how I’d do it, anyway.’

Nevins regarded him flatly. The pen nib hovered, two inches off the paper. It made a couple of small motions, as if circling in on a concise summary. Then it touched down, and Nevins wrote: DISPASSIONATE AND RELAXED. His handwriting was even and careful. He wrote only in capitals. The ink was police-blue. He applied visible nib pressure. Marshall liked that. Maybe like the man himself, every new page carried the ghost of prior cases.

Nevins said, ‘You notice the car when you got here?’

Marshall shook his head. ‘There are vehicles almost solid on both curbs. It could’ve been here and I didn’t notice.’

‘You see any exhaust smoke?’

‘Yeah, a little.’

Nevins looked out the window again. Marshall saw him chewing on possibilities. Fumes implied a cool engine, no fumes implied a warm engine. He wanted to know how long they’d sat out there, thinking about the hit. He was murder police. He didn’t come out to do the work, only to let someone squirm out of culpability, plead down to Manslaughter in the Second. He needed death, and the proof of human planning: Murder in the First Degree. He came out looking for Murder One.

He said, ‘How’d you know this guy? Friend of yours?’

‘Yeah, former colleague. We were NYPD.’

He told Nevins about his and Vialoux’s history, the taskforce back in 2010, Brooklyn South narcotics.

Marshall said, ‘Then I got moved to a different unit, and I didn’t really see him again until today. He called me up about two o’clock, said he needed to meet.’

Nevins nodded as he listened, and then he wrote: VIC X/MOS and WIT X/MOS, which was a shorthand meaning both victim and witness were ex-members of service, ex-NYPD.

Nevins said, ‘So he knew someone wanted to clip him?’

Marshall told him about the sixty-seven-k debt.

‘And let me guess: he couldn’t pay?’

Marshall stretched a leg down the aisle, reached in his pocket for the envelope Vialoux had given him. He placed it on the table.

‘What’s this?’

‘He said he had until Tuesday to make the payment. They sent him that as encouragement.’

He watched Nevins examine the contents. The two photos, the written threat. Money by Tuesday. No cops. For a moment, the pen hovered again above the notebook, and Marshall sensed his internal debate, whether to transcribe the message or not. He obviously deemed it sufficiently memorable.

‘Wife and daughter, I take it?’

‘Yeah.’

Nevins leaned back in his chair, looked at the broken window. ‘O’Malley?’

The cop who’d made the steak joke glanced over. ‘Yeah?’

‘Put a unit on the victim’s address when you get it. Hold until further notice.’

‘You got it.’

Nevins returned the papers to the envelope. ‘No cops. But he told you.’

Marshall nodded. ‘We go back. He thought I could help him on the quiet.’

‘But you hadn’t seen him in a while, right? How’d he make contact?’

‘Through a lawyer I know. Harry Rush. Vialoux went to Harry first, and Harry put him on to me.’

‘And who suggested this place for the meeting?’

‘Ray did. He lives around here – Fiftieth Street, something like that. Haven’t been there in a while.’

‘And how do you know Mr Rush?’

Marshall worked for him as an unlicensed P.I., but he didn’t want that going in Nevins’ notebook. He said, ‘I know him from my cop days.’

Half the story, at least.

Nevins said, ‘So who was leaning on Vialoux? Who’d he owe?’

Marshall looked outside to the ambulance. Paulie was still in the back getting oxygen, but he was upright now, sitting on the edge of the stretcher. Marshall wasn’t sure how much the guy had overheard, but he was erring toward nothing. The man had come on too friendly for someone who sensed a life-and-death issue being outlined in his orbit. So it was tempting not to give up the names – D’Anton Lewis, Frank Cifaretti – and just look into it himself. It would be nice to find whoever killed Vialoux and drop them off maybe a four- or five-story fire escape. But Nevins was looking at him with such a steady, neutral stare, it was like he could see through Marshall’s face to that imagined narrative as it unfolded. In any case, reticence wouldn’t be any kind of service. The more people hunting, the better.

Marshall said, ‘He told me a guy called D’Anton Lewis got him involved with the betting operation, and that it was run by someone called Frank Cifaretti. The debt was with Cifaretti.’

That obviously warranted a notebook entry. Nevins wrote down the names. He said, ‘Who else?’

‘That’s all he gave me. You look outside, there’s probably a napkin and a pen trapped under the table. He was in the process of writing down the details.’

Nevins watched him. ‘Keep his mouth free for drinking, huh?’

His pen hovered. The nib made its circular motion, but it didn’t land. He closed the notebook, cupped one hand in the other and cracked his knuckles in clean and measured sequence, one-two-three-four as he looked out the window.

He said, ‘I’m retiring next week. Last shift’s Tuesday.’

Tuesday. The same day as Vialoux’s deadline. Marshall let that small parallel go unspoken.

Nevins said, ‘I did two years down in Baltimore – CID homicide. Worked ninety-seven murders total, lead and assist, not once did I work a dead police. Not even once. CID handles cop shootings, but I never caught one. Now I got a dead gold-shield, five days to go.’

He shook his head, and then his eyes came back, and Marshall saw the story wasn’t so much a digression as evidence: there was nothing else in the world that he took more seriously than what he was doing right now. He watched Nevins stand up, slide his chair back in.

‘Wait there a moment.’

Marshall said, ‘I know the family. If you’re doing next-of-kin, I’ll ride with you.’

Nevins thought about it. ‘Wait there.’

‘If you’re checking up on me, personnel’s slow this time of night. Talk to Lee Ashcroft at organized crime.’

Nevins looked at him for a moment, like maybe the name meant something. Maybe he knew what flavor of operation Ashcroft liked to run. But he didn’t say anything. He went outside, stood by the table and the broken glass and began dialing on his cell phone. He had it to his ear when the cop called O’Malley interrupted him.

‘Detective?’

Nevins put the phone to his lapel.

The cop said, ‘We ran the vic’s details, dispatch says they had a nine-one-one call from his address just tonight, twenty-two hundred. Wife called it in, said she had a guy at her living-room window – guy in a mask just standing there, waving at her.’

THREE

Nevins told the other detective to stay at the scene and interview the restaurant owner, sign the body release once the M.E. showed up. When he reached his car, Marshall was waiting at the passenger door.

Nevins said, ‘Uh-uh. Sorry.’

‘I told you I know the family. I’ll ride with you.’

‘You haven’t been cleared. No offense, I’ve no idea who you are.’

‘Yeah, but Hannah Vialoux does. So it’s an easy test, isn’t it? She’ll either vouch for me, or she won’t.’

He opened the passenger door, but Nevins cut in again: ‘Hey. No.’

Aiming